http://www.melanoma.com/self_examination.html
A skin self-exam helps you detect and get treatment for skin cancer or other skin problems as early as possible. The easiest time to do the exam may be after you take a bath or shower. Women may wish to perform their skin self-exam when they do their monthly breast self-exam. Men may want to do the skin self-exam when they perform their monthly testicular self-exam.
I would never downplay the significance of all other cancers. My blog is mostly about melanoma, but please don't misinterpret that to be that I think melanoma issues should outweigh other cancer threats. On the contrary, what I think is that breast cancer, per say, is so widespread, that people have become more educated on this. More and more women take breast self-exams seriously and never miss a month...even remind their friends. I just want the same for melanoma. Because melanoma is mostly asymptomatic, your biggest defense in fighting the beast is early detection...which is where self-exams come in. Get out your camera and snap some shots of spots on yourself and your kids with the date. If you click on the above link, there are body maps in which you can write down notes about size, color, shape, etc.
I once read about a woman and her young teenage daughter. It went something like this. She was doing the laundry and saw a spot of blood on her daughter's underwear. She could tell right away that it wasn't very much blood and it wasn't in the right location to be from her period. She meant to mention it to the daughter, but a day or so passed. She noticed it again in the laundry. When she asked her daughter, she didn't know anything about it. They realized it was the location of a mole on her buttocks, and the daughter commented that this area had recently been itchy, but she didn't realize it had bled. Again, she would only know if someone looked at her butt, and there was only really a little bit of blood on her underwear. It was a mole that she had since birth. It had changed significantly. Point is...the daughter had passed the age long before that anyone was helping her take a bath or get dressed. So she herself didn't even realize this was going on because she wasn't looking at her rear either. This is another reason why we should teach our children to check themselves out too. Rachel has shown me a few spots that she was worried about, one we had removed. It is all about education.
Have a dermatologist check you out regularly. Your job is to find red flags and help the dermatologist.
Will these things keep you from getting melanoma, suffering from melanoma, or dying from melanoma? There are no guarantees. I figure it is like wearing a seatbelt. I sure's the heck want to give myself the best chance of survival if I'm in a wreck, so I wear my seatbelt even though there are no guarantees. We all know that I am safer with my seatbelt on. The same thing goes with a self-exam of any kind...value your life in all circumstances.
Resourceshttp://medlineplus.gov/ (a service of the Nat'l Library of Medicine and the Nat'l Institutes of Health)
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